A Look Into My Creative Process
Painted Paper
I joyfully paint and print with a Gelli plate, creating a mountain of collage papers!
I spend time experimenting, building an abundant collection of papers with various designs and visual textures. I love using stencils, doilies, and everyday objects like Q-tips to craft unique patterns.
All the painted papers, with their different and distinct patterns, add fun and interesting layers to my paintings.Book pages and sheet music make wonderfully, interesting pages to print on, and often, words or phrases subtly peek through in the final piece, which I absolutely adore!
Collage
I incorporate collage into almost all of my artwork, as I love how it adds details and textures that could never be achieved with paint alone.From the photo, I hope you can see how I place the torn paper to get a feel for the final result. As I layer collage peices, I experiment with how different colours, patterns and shapes will look. I play with the placement of each piece to create the painting.
There’s a lot of rearranging and playing throughout my process to get it just right.
Finishing Each Artwork
I enjoy the process of selecting papers for each new artwork, tearing them into pieces, and placing them on a painted canvas.
The final step is to adhere each piece down with matte medium and watch the painting come together.
Naming the Artwork
Finding a perfect and meaningful title to tell the story of each artwork takes time and contemplation.
Sometimes the title emerges from small bits of text within the artwork, and other times, the personality of a chicken simply captures my imagination.This piece is titled ‘Cookie, the Emotional Support Chicken.’ On one of her feathers, the words ‘just keep on’ are visible, offering a little encouragement to keep going.
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